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ECCENTRIC NOTES OF DISSENT: THE ART OF ZHU WEI
Xenia Pi?ch
Most artists in
China's so-called avant-garde circle adopt Western media as a form of
expression. Zhu Wei does not. Rather, he sees himself as the single artist
who pushes the age-old Chinese painting tradition, both in content and
style, into the contemporary.
Zhu Wei's images
are a mosaic of commentaries based on social and political issues that the
artist observes in his daily surroundings. They portray Zhu Wei coming to
terms with himself in China's contemporary urban society in general, and
the politically laden capital, Beijing, in particular. His images are
neither objective nor distanced. The viewer sees the world through Zhu
Wei's eyes and thus follows the fantastic roving of his mind where time,
place, and space coalesce.
It is Zhu Wei's
incisive observations and laconic humour that make his artwork so
persuasive. The direct, intense, and sometimes even overbearing visual
presence of his compositions, as well as their painterly diction, are
rooted in China's propaganda art. However, the technically refined
and meticulous brushwork reflects his scrupulous training in traditional
Chinese painting techniques.
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Zhu Wei was born on
the eve of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, the son of medical doctors
working in the People's liberation Army (PLA). Historical circumstance
would make him come of age in a world where individuality was frowned upon
and deemed irrelevant. Hong Ying vividly describes this emotional
landscape in her novel Summer of Betrayal:
...
under the brilliant glare of the shining Red Sun we grew
up
pale and thin, hiding in dark, gray corners. Our youth
was
spent in the emptiness attendant upon a loss of faith,
in
ferocious attention in all kinds of hope, but when we
wanted
to cash in on them we discovered that the world
is
not built on hope alone. So the first half of our lives has
been
a series of contradictions. If there's going to be a
second
half, it can only mean drifting along from day to
day
resigned to circumstances, competing to be good at
feigning
ignorance (1)
Yet, Zhu Wei
has no intention of feigning ignorance or of succumbing to the various
traumas that mark his generation. Despite the turbulent circumstances of
his youth, he has developed a distinct -- though often torn -- sense of
self. Seeing himself as a chronicler of an era, Zhu Wei stresses:
"Unlike other contemporary artists, there is no direct political
intention in my art."(2) Yet looking at his oeuvre, it is clear that Zhu Wei is deeply critical of
China's social and political situation and that his works aim to confront,
to startle, and to indict.
Zhu Wei's
intense need to seek and reveal the truth behind the facades of everyday
life underlies his artistic creations. More often than not, he displays
his findings with a prickly dry humor to emphasize the absurdities he
finds. Even in real life interactions, Zhu Wei frequently reveals a
similar playfulness and disjointedness. For example, he told a reporter
interviewing him on a series of paintings with obvious humouristic
undertones that he is not a funny person at all and actually often felt
gloomy. When the reporter, taking him seriously, probed further, Zhu Wei
replied that the only thing that can make him happy is "drinking
beer."(3)
A perfectionist to
the core, Zhu Wei appreciates the meticulous labour that goes into the
creation of his works. He uses a xuan paper (a special type of
paper used in traditional Chinese painting), produced exclusively
according to his detailed specifications, and carefully textures the
background of each work. Depending on the size of the painting, Zhu Wei
applies the first layer of colour either on the incised stone plates in
his yard or on the finer rack inside the studio. After drying, the paper
is treated once more on a more detailed surface, such as a sisal carpet.
The often quite dominant background textures in his works are thus
adjusted to the mood he aims to transmit. Depending on the scale --some of
Zhu Wei’s works are up to three meters in height and two meters in width
--the paintings are grafted together from several sheets of paper. When
working on large compositions, Zhu Wei uses a small prototype of the image
so that the shades and colour gradations of each section fit in with the
overall composition and reveal a cohesive whole.
Zhu Wei’s hand,
his application of Chinese ink and pigments, is unmistakable. During his
education at the Art College of the People’s Liberation Army, he
mastered the fine brush technique. According to his teacher, Liu Tiancheng,
Zhu Wei assiduously trained himself in the styles of the famous Tang and
Song dynasty masters, as well as the figure painting style of the Five
Dynasties. He researched early Buddhist and Daoist mural art and studied
the pictorial representations on Han dynasty pricks. Internalizing these
traditional techniques as well as the language of propaganda art, for
which he was trained, Zhu Wei developed his particular visual vocabulary.
Zhu Wei vehemently
detests any kind of categorization of himself or his art along the
assigned lineages of contemporary Chinese art production, such as
Political Pop or Cynical Realism. He keeps to himself, both personally and
professionally. Similarly, Zhu Wei has seldom shown his works alongside
his peers and does not spend evenings together with them discussing the
underpinning of their approaches. Zhu Wei wants us to experience the
multi-layered aspects of his works and to see his as an independent voice.
Although using some of its visual tools, he clearly counters the
homogenous nature of propaganda art.
Zhu Wei works in
series. As a result, and despite his reluctance Io allow classification,
the artist's impressively large oeuvre --close to one thousand recorded
pieces - already includes mine pre-existing caesuras. Furthermore, a
number of thematic continuities can also be identified. Apart from issues
relating to the artist’s psychology, they include his observations on
the political and social fabric of contemporary society. The following
selection consists of ten works that Zhu Wei completed between 1994 and
2002. Belonging to several different series, they are analyzed according
to two thematic topics.
TOTALITARIAN
NOSTALGIA: THE STRIKINGLY BIZARRE
One of the
most conspicuous aspects often found in mainland Chinese contemporary art
production of the 1980s and 1990s is its propagandistic aura. Although
meant in the vein of dissent they all share a common root in the visual
diction of Chinese propaganda art of earlier decades. As Geremie Barmé
describes in his book on contemporary Chinese culture In the Red(4),
dissident groups in mainland China "use the language of their enemies
when writing their denunciations and attacking their foes at various
forums."(5)
Zhu Wei was
trained to produce propaganda images for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
during his education and is thus well versed in its rhetoric or, as
Mikhail Epstein, calls it, "ideologemes."(6) The artist's visual vocabulary follows the same path, although with
different intentions from his contemporaries and often with more subtlety.
Compared to Wang Guangyi's Big Criticism series, for example, the
,critical articulations of Zhu Wei's works are decidedly more refined both
visually and intellectually. Where the artist mixes in a pinch of his
laconic humour, the viewer is faced with the strikingly bizarre scenes to
which Zhu Wei bears witness.
The
ideologemes created by the CCP are grafted together from various visual,
literary, social and political sources, including traditional symbols that
are deeply engrained in Chinese public memory. The evocation of famous
masterpieces of the Chinese art historical canon and their subsequent
subversion thus neatly fits into the dissident discourse of China's so
called avant-garde art world.(7) Zhu Wei uses this tactic - down to the application of seals to imitate the
traditional practice of identifying authorship and ownership - to lay bare
the disconcerting daily realties he encounters. Comrades (1995)(fig.
1) and Pictures of the Strikingly Bizarre: Driving after Drinking (1994)(fig.
2) are some obvious examples.
The
compositional structure as well as the formation and stature of the main
figure in Comrades is visibly based on the third section of the
Tang dynasty (618-907 AD) painting Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk (eighth
century)(fig. 3). Instead of treating a roll of silk, Zhu Wei's central
figure--whose physiognomy bales an uncanny resemblance to Mao Zedong's
effeminate features--is in the process of dying red what used to be the
British flag and thus patiently brings to life the likeness of the
Communist Party flag. The allusion to Hong Kong's return to the Motherland
is emphasized by the depiction of bauhinias, the Special Administrative
Region's national flower, and the People's Liberation Army soldiers in the
background.(8)
The
"mood of languor and melancholy typically associated with court
ladies"(9) that is evident in the Tang dynasty painting is coarsely interrupted by
Zhu Wei's cartouches in this work. They cite, as the art critic Jia
Fangzhou notes,(10) a popular underground poem from the revolutionary period in Russia:
Comrades,
Comrades, you are high up and dry, what are
you
dragging me into the mud for?
Moreover
you spit at me. But, comrades, despite being
covered
with mud and saliva I will still firmly stand amidst
your
ranks.(11)
Contrary to
the visual allusions, there is nothing docile or relined about the text
that accompanies this painting. Rather, Zhu Wei voices China's resolution
to walk as equals amongst the ranks of world leaders.(12) On a deeper level, however, Zhu Wei also addresses the price China's
people had to pay for Mao's visions. The Chinese characters for
"...you are high up and dry..." [gao yu gan] in the first stanza
are uncannily close to those for ‘high ranking official' [gao (ji) gan (bu)].
The artists thus suggests, visually supported by the red drops of dye,
that those high up rely on the blood of the people to accomplish their
plans.
In Pictures
of the Strikingly Bizarre: Serving the People,(13) the compositional arrangement of Mao Zedong in a sedan chair surrounded by
his entourage is manifestly based on the corresponding section of another
Tang dynasty painting, entitled The Imperial Sedan chair (fig. 4).
The Tang work depict Emperor Taizong greeting the Tibetan minister, who
came to welcome Princess Wecheng (Taizong’s daughter) as the bride-to-be
of the Tibetan King.(14) The aura in this work is one of solemnity, poise, and authority.
In Zhu Wei’s
painting, however, Chairman Mao is stripped of Taizong’s implied
political superiority and dignity. The disproportionate representation of
his body parts, the hot liquid he is being brought in a red cup inscribed
with "Café," and the grimacing expressions of his followers all
work together in deriding the strikingly comical veneration. Visually, Zhu
Wei also plays a pun on the Chinese expression "blow the trumpet and
carry someone in a sedan chair (chui laba, tai jiaozi), meaning to flatter
rich and influential people. The irony is pushed further by the evocation
of Mao Zedong’s famous phrase "Serving the People". The
reality is that Mao was undoubtedly separated from the workers and
peasants he clamed to serve. Rather, he was revered and waited on like a
Chinese emperor by the cadres and the military, which profited from his
power.
Zhu Wei is
both cynical and disquieted with regard to the nostalgic revivalism of the
Mao cult. In China Diary, No.7 (1995)(fig. 5) the viewer is taken
into a traditional study room with young boys. A child-like figure bearing
a clear resemblance to Mao Zedong and another, in an army uniform, are
coaching some youths. The absence of the teacher allows them to fill the
heads of the students with "dangerous ideas." What they are
reading is a copy of the Records of the Strange, Second Volume,(15) a book that was
traditionally blacklisted for youths as it was thought to instill negative
tendencies in them. Another boy, probably in reference to the European
origin of Marxist thought, is reading a text in Western alphabet.
The huge television
in the background with the Great Helmsman --sporting a Red Guard armband
--waving to the masses seems to function as an example of what fatal
cataclysms Mao Zedong’s indoctrination sessions brought about. Alluding
to his own experience of daily Mao Zedong Thought study, Zhu Wei puts
himself into the painting. Little Zhu sits in the lower right corner but
isn’t listening. Wearing headphones, he looks up sheepishly from
flipping through a copy of his own first catalogue as an artist
--identified by the title The Story of Beijing and the insignia of
Zhu Wei’s sole agent, Plum Blossoms Gallery.
Zhu Wei also
addresses the immense commercial value of the Mao cult by identifying the
footage as a Channel V music video and by placing the television on a
table--next to a bottle of Head and Shoulders shampoo--where one would
traditionally expect to see scholar objects. The dream-lick time fractures
in the image seem to underline the Mao Cult’s severe decontextualization
of one of the darkest chapters in the history of the People’s Republic
of China (PRC).
In another
painting, Zhu Wei commemorates--not without a pinch of dry humour--the
still visibly decreasing influence of Mao Zedong’s ideology on
contemporary Chinese life. In China Diary, No.4 (1995)(fig. 6) the
viewer sees Mao playing a flute--a pun on the expression
"drum-blow" (gu chui) meaning to advocate (revolution) or
preach. Zhu Wei depicts Mao in a stage-like setting, but the theatre is
closed, as the municipal seal on the door announces. Red flags, paper
flowers, and the Gate of Heavenly Peace in the background evoke the
ambiance of extravagant Cultural Revolution parades. Zhu Wei’s
cartouches read:
Saxophone
entered China. But actually ‘Bailemen’(16)
and
‘Angle’ mounted the stage first. Everyone knows them.
In
the short 20s and 30s it already existed in the Western
influenced
metropolis.
(17)
After
1949, it slowly disappeared and during the Cultural
Revolution
it was made to disappear even more. As a
representative
of rotten art, it suffered doubly.
The
60s are gone. In 1994 Beijing held the first
international
jazz festival.(18)
The Painting
suggests that all of Mao’s propaganda tunes cannot stop the appreciation
for Western music that had started in China in the early twentieth
century. Now the Chairman sits on his stage but there is no one there to
listen to him. If the viewer were not to read the cartouches, however,
s/he could not have guessed that Zhu Wei is commenting on China’s first
international jazz festival. He uses the visual vocabulary and iconography
of the Cultural Revolution era to record a decidedly different event.
This
dialectic relationship between Mao Zedong’s era and the contemporary
shapes many of Zhu Wei’s works. The interlacing of text and image in
these works is rooted in propaganda art’s didactic architecture. Yet,
Zhu Wei undermine the government discourse, lays it bare and ridicules it.
These works thus effuse an "ironic nostalgia" that Geremie Barmé
situates in the realm of totalitarian nostalgia where the refurbished past
is used to begin a new history.(19)
OPIATE FOR THE
PEOPLE
The rapid
changes that Deng Xiaoping’s Open Door policy brought about are another
important topic in Zhu Wei’s art. He poignantly depicts the people’s
blinded transfixion by commercial prosperity(20) and unveils the current government’s cunning appropriation of Mao’s
propaganda machinery. Working at full speed, it now dispenses to the
people a new kind of opiate: material wealth.
In Box,
No.3 (1995)(fig.7) Zhu Wei addresses China’s westernizing
transformations. He depicts a traditionally dressed intellectual sitting
at a bar and drinking Becks beer. He looks up at a parasol that is
inscribed with the words "Raffles Hotel."(21) The West and its colonializing shadow appear to loom over the figure as he
--critically eyed by a woman --seemingly proclaims:
Hey,
I think the following. That flag wraps a box.
What
actually is in the box, no one has ever seen.
Going
back, that broken box is thrown away and
that
ragged flag is ripped apart.
Tell
the victor that he made a mistake. The world
already
started to change long before.(22)
In these
thoughts, Zhu Wei expresses his opposition to the deprecation of all
things Western as well as the indiscriminate condemnation of all things
traditional during Mao Zedong’s era. By including the banner of a
pharmacy that claims to join Western and Chinese medicine and to be thus
able to "heal the wounded and rescue the dying," Zhu Wei also
voices his distrust for the current status quo. The banner seems to allude
to the Chinese saying: "What kind of medicine is sold from the
calabash?"(23) Zhu Wei thus questions the effect this miracle cure (i.e. westernized
modernization) will actually have on Chinese society.
In Supreme
Treatise on Moral Retribution, No.18 (2000)(fig. 8) Zhu Wei provides
the viewer with an answer to the above question: it works like a drug. Zhu
Wei most strongly expresses this physiological condition in the eyes of
his figures. In their function as windows onto the soul, the eyes--either
closed or open--take on the central role of transmitting emotion in Zhu
Wei’s works and in this thematic context they are particularly dominant.
The female figure seems to be in the process of swearing an allegiance,
her eyes conveying reverence and submission. Similarly, the eyes of the
two men in the background effuse transfixion mixed with a hint fascination
and disbelief.
In the Chinese
title of this painting, Zhu Wei alludes to Daoist beliefs of immortality.
In Daoist lore a person that meets the celestial Laozi, the enigmatic
father of Daoism, may be given a capsule imparting him/her with
immortality. It is here that Zhu Wei draws the parallel with China’s
contemporary situation. For the CCP Laozi’s capsule of immortality came
in the form of economic modernization, giving the government a new lease
on life. Moreover, as the figure’s expressions suggests, the
populace’s striving for the material wealth propels an obsession similar
to the desperate search for immortality potions by some Daoist adepts.
Zhu Wei pushes the
concept of trance-like following to the point of fanaticism in some other
works. In Sunflowers, No.30 (2000)(fig. 9), the viewer
re-encounters the two men from the painting discussed above who are joined
by an almost identical third figure. The window, though which the scene is
observed, probably refers to Zhu Wei’s studio--the turquoise star
depicted on the left wall is identical to his own bronze sculpture China
Diary Star (1999). The viewer thus shares the artist’s perspective
both visually and psychologically. As the title implies, the figures pass
by in a seemly hypnotic state, transfixed by the object of their avidity.
In Utopia, No.32 (2002)(fig. 10) the artist portrays two
bald-headed men that seem to absurdly cheer on an event beyond the picture
plane. Like the figures in the painting above, their state is one of
puppets in a carefully orchestrated spectacle. Hence. Both works exude a
chilling atmosphere of absurdity and docility.
Interestingly,
it seems that in Zhu Wei’s world, the people’s attitude changes little
when the bubble of economic prosperity bursts. His Festival (1998)
series focuses on the mass lay-offs of employees from China’s
state-owned enterprises starting in 1998.(24) It is the pallid faces of these people that the viewer sees in Festival,
No.21 (1998)(fig. 11). Although in dire straits, the eyes of the two
men effuse the same hypnotic quality as the figures in the works discussed
above. The arid landscape and the industrial area in the background, as
well as the men’s apparent passiveness, strongly evoke the desolate
state with which they are faced. Watching the government sponsored
firework display in celebration of the Chinese New Year,(25) their expression do not reflect the joyousness typically associated with
the most important festival of the Chinese lunar calendar. But they also
show no sign of rebellion. Deprived of any social insurance system and
forced into poverty, they still stand there as onlookers--inert and
anesthetized.
What makes
them such docile creatures, Zhu Wei seems to imply, is the government’s
aforementioned propaganda machinery. Despite the superficially increasing
freedoms, this behemoth from the Mao era still works today as an
alarmingly effective mind-control apparatus. It entertains the masses and
promises everyone a better future. The privations of today, it pledges,
will be the prosperity of tomorrow. By adding a dash of national pride(26) to the mélange--as Zhu Wei also seems to suggest in his Utopia
(2002) series--it has found a new and highly effective opiate for its
people.
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As can be seen from
these works, Zhu Wei’s art is inextricably bound to China’s present
condition--from historical catharsis to social transmutation. The
disjunctures that mark contemporary Chinese life are evidenced by the
effortless coexistence of different times and events within the same
painting. Zhu Wei’s keen observations allow him to successfully indict,
unmask, and thus rebel against this status quo.
Yet, Zhu Wei
has a deep-seated love and reverence for his country and culture. The
lyrics for "This Space"(27) by the famous Chinese rock-star Cui Jian,(28) which Zhu Wei inscribed on Sweet Life, No.38 (1999)(fig. 12),
reflects the artist’s torn, yet emotional relationship with contemporary
China. They read:
I
can’t open the sky and I can’t penetrate the earth.
Anyhow,
freedom is not a temporary prison.
You
can’t leave me and I can’t leave you.
No
one knows if in fact it’s love or dependence.
Money
is just money and profit is just profit.
But
you and I are not slaves.
You
can only serve me and I can only serve you.
Just
like pairs of small shrimps.
There
is nothing fresh and new in this space
Just
like there is no secret in our love.
I
looked at you before but could not see into the depths.
Who
would have known that only after
many
encounters [I] understand that it’s a borderless void.
Just
like in this space.
All
that I’ve thought I’ve not said and all that
I’ve
said I’ve not done.
What
makes me happy is playing the guitar and
singing
a song for you.
Don’t
intermittently cry and laugh.
You’ve
already know what kind of a thing I am
for
a long time.
Heaven
is a pot and the surrounding is a desert.
You
are a dried-up well but the deeper the more beautiful.
The
fire in this breast, the sweat on this body
That
is the real sun, the real spring.
There
is nothing fresh and new in this space
Just
like there is no secret in our love.
I
looked at you before but could not see into the depths.
Who
knows that one can only understand after
looking
in and out that it’s a borderless void.
Just
like in this space.
(29)
Set against
the three factions that most strongly shape China’s reality: government,
army, and the business world--personified by the gluttonous,(30) businessmen in the background--Cui Jian’s lyrics reflects Zhu Wei’s
independent spirit and underlines the contradictory structures that mark
contemporary Chinese society. Whilst tracing society’s ugly face, Zhu
Wei is able to pierce through its multi-faceted layering and see the
beauty that lies beneath. It’s the source from which he derives his
inspiration and it’s the soil that nurtures his dissent. In the same
vein, he takes on the traditional Chinese painting medium only to
transform it so that it may express his acute contemporary vision.
Notes:
(1)
Hong Ying, Summer of Betrayal (New York: Grove Press, 1997), 132.
(2)
Interview with Carma Hinton, 1997. See digital disk Zhu Wei Diary (Hong
Kong: Plum Blossoms (International) Ltd., 2000).
(3)
Sherman Chau, "Reality Checked," in iConnect (November 3, 2000).
(4)
The cover of the book is in fact a portrait of Deng Xiaoping by Zhu Wei
entitled China China (1997).
(5)
Geremie Barmé, In the Red (New York: Columbia University Press,
1999), 333.
(6)
Ibid., 326-327.
(7)
Examples are Wang Qingsong’s Night Revels of Lao Li (2000) and Hong
Lei’s Imitating Zhao Mengfu’s Autumn Colors on the Que and Hua
Mountains (2003).
(8)
The preparations for the repatriation of the then British colony, which
included the creation of a PLA unit that was dispatched for special
training in a Guangdong garrison in 1995, was a central political topic
after the turbulent waves created by the Tiananmen incident turned into
occasional ripples. At exactly midnight on the eve of the handover of Hong
Kong, these PLA soldiers crossed the border in the New Territories in a
symbolic act of military conquest.
(9)
Xin Yang et al., Three Thousand Years of Chinese Painting (New Heaven:
Yale University and Foreign Language Press, 1997), 78.
(10) Fangzhou
Jia, "Zhu Wei and His Determination," in Zhu Wei Diary (Hong
Kong: Plum Blossoms (International) Ltd., 2000), 281.
(11) Translation
by the author.
(12) This
aspiration was most famously encapsulated in Mao Zedong’s ringing 1957
proclamation that China will be equal surpass Britain in industrial
productivity within fifteen years. See Immanuel Hsü, The Rise of Modern
China (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 655.
(13) Records
of the Strange, Second Volume is a Ming dynasty collection of short
stories. Zhu Wei presents this series as a new edition of that book.
Compilations of stories describing strange events have a long history in
China. Liaozhai’s Records of the Strange by Pu Songling
(1640-1715 AD) is one such example. In the same vein as Pu, Zhu Wei here
presents himself to us as a historian of the strange. See Judith Zeitlin,
Historian of the Strange (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993).
(14) Xin Yang et al., Three Thousand Years of Chinese Painting (New Heaven:
Yale University and Foreign Language Press, 1997), 61.
(15) Ibid. See endnote 13.
(16) This word refers to the name of a dancehall in Shanghai that opened in
1932.
(17) This usually refers to pre-liberation Shanghai.
(18) Translation
by the author.
(19) Geremie Barmé, In the Red (New York: Columbia University Press,
1999), 344.
(20) Similar
concerns can also be seen in a number of works by China’s youngest
generation of contemporary artists.
(21) The Raffles
Hotel in Singapore is famed for its "Long Bar." A connection can
also be drawn to Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles (1781-1826), who was an agent
and colonial administrator of the British East India Company. In 1824 he
purchased Singapore Island for the British Empire.
(22) Translation
by the author.
(23) A bottle
gourd is a medicine repository for traveling monks. Their medicine is said
to alleviate any illness and sometimes even impart immortality.
(24) Within four
years, a total of more than twenty-six million Chinese lost their
jobs--out of which ten million remained unemployment by 2002. Already poor
areas, such as China’s northeastern "rustbelt," were hit
particularly hard. See People’s Daily website: http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200210/27/eng20021027_105729.shtml.
(25) Not shown
in this work but in others that are part of this series.
(26) Most
directly apparent since the victorious bid for the 2008 Olympics in 2001.
(27) From Cui
Jian’s 1991 album Resolve.
(28) Cui Jian is
one of Zhu Wei’s closest friends. In the early 1990s he created the
stage backdrop that Cui Jian still uses for his performances.
(29) Translation
by the author.
(30) Holding one’s chopsticks
close to the tip is a sign of greed.
Illusion of
pictures 图片说明:
Figure 1. Zhu Wei, Comrades, 1995, ink and colour on paper.
Courtesy by Plum Blossoms (International) Ltd., Hong Kong 朱伟，《同志们》，1995，水墨设色纸本。
Figure 2. Zhu Wei, Pictures of the Strikingly Bizarre: Serving the
People, 1994, ink and colour on paper. Courtesy of Plum Blossoms
(International) Ltd., Hong Kong 朱伟，《二刻拍案惊奇：为人民服务》，1994，水墨设色纸本。
Figure 3. Zhang Xuan, Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk, eighth century,
ink and colour on silk. Courtesy of Plum Blossoms (International) Ltd.,
Hong Kong
张萱，《捣练图》，公元八世纪，水墨设色绢本。
Figure 4. Attributed to Yan Liben, The Imperial Sedan Chair, date
unknown, ink and colour on silk. Courtesy of Plum Blossoms (International)
Ltd., Hong Kong
阎立本，《步辇图》，未知年代，水墨设色绢本。
Figure 5. Zhu Wei, China Diary, No.7, 1995, ink and colour on
paper. Courtesy of Plum Blossoms (International) Ltd., Hong Kong 朱伟，《中国日记七号》，1995，水墨设色纸本。
Figure 6. Zhu Wei, China Diary, No.4, 1995, ink and colour on
paper. Courtesy of Plum Blossoms (International) Ltd., Hong Kong 朱伟，《中国日记四号》，1995，水墨设色纸本。
Figure 7. Zhu Wei, Box, No.3, 1995, ink and colour on paper.
Courtesy of Plum Blossoms (International) Ltd., Hong Kong
朱伟，《盒子三号》，1995，水墨设色纸本。
Figure 8. Zhu Wei, Supreme Treatise on Moral Retribution, No. 18,
2000, ink and colour on paper. Courtesy of Plum Blossoms (International)
Ltd., Hong Kong
朱伟，《太上感应十八号》，2000，水墨设色纸本。
Figure 9. Zhu Wei, Sunflowers, No.30, 2000, ink and colour on
paper. Courtesy of Plum Blossoms (International) Ltd., Hong Kong 朱伟，《向日葵三十号》，2000，水墨设色纸本。
Figure 10. Zhu Wei, Utopia, No.32, 2002, ink and colour on paper.
Courtesy of Plum Blossoms (International) Ltd., Hong Kong 朱伟，《乌托邦三十二号》，2002，水墨设色纸本。
Figure 11. Zhu Wei, Festival, No.21, 1998, ink and colour on paper.
Courtesy of Plum Blossoms (International) Ltd., Hong Kong
朱伟，《节日二十一号》，1998，水墨设色纸本。
Figure 12. Zhu Wei, Sweet Life, No.38, 1999, ink and colour on
paper. Courtesy of Plum Blossoms (International) Ltd., Hong Kong
朱伟，《甜蜜的生活三十八号》，1999，水墨设色纸本。
First published inYISHU: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, September
2004 | Fall Issue
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